Peter was the best table tennis player in his school and hardly ever lost a match. He hated losing anything. When he won, he would feel really good. If he lost, he would feel terrible. It seemed to Peter that losing was the worst thing in the world.
A new kid, Albert, came to Peter's school. He was good at table tennis, too. Soon there would be a match between Peter and Albert. Peter worked hard to get ready for the match. but Albert didn't seem to think much of it. When the match began, Albert was real player. There was always a smile on his face, while Peter looked serious all the time. Peter thought it was so important to win the match that he even wanted to cheat but he lost in the end.
"You played very well, Peter. I think we can play again sometime," said Albert.
But Peter didn't feel happy and couldn't fall asleep that night.
One day, Peter saw Albert playing basketball. Though he lost again and again, the happy smile never left his face. Peter found Albert was great at table tennis but bad at basketball. However, he enjoyed both of them.
Whether he won or lost the game, Albert enjoyed it. Peter came to realise that enjoying a game was much more important than winning or losing it. He felt happier than ever before.
Learning Vocabulary Doesn't Have to Be Boring
Many students have problems with vocabulary when preparing for tests like the SATs. Last week, TEENS offered advice on how to memorise new words. If you're now familiar with those methods, why not try moving on to the next stage by using the following tips to build up your English vocabulary?
Repeated encounters(反复遇见)
The usual way of "memorising" new material is through repeating it while it's still in your mind. However, simply repeating a word seems to have little long-term effect.
But one kind of repetition is effective: repetition of encounters with word. Words stand a good chance of being remembered if they've been met at least seven times in your reading, at intervals(相隔一段时间).so, read English magazines, newspapers, and websites regularly.
Space and review
It's better to distribute(分配)memory work over a period of time rather than do it in single session(一段时间). This is known as the "principle of distributed practice", where new vocabulary introduced in one lesson is reviewed in the next, and then in later lessons.
Use it or lose it
Putting words to use in interesting ways helps add them to your long-term memory. In a study of vocabulary learning, students who made up their own sentences with new words and read them aloud remembered them better than those who learned the words separately and silently. Best of all, students were given the task of silently imagining a picture in their minds to go with a new word. So it might help if learners link words with a mental image.
Mix it up
Let's face it-learning words can be really boring, but it doesn't have to be. Thanks to the Internet, there are more interesting ways to get the job done. Try watching videos from English-speaking social media celebrities and copying the way they speak. You could even upload your own videos and try becoming a star yourself.
